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Inexperience with Hi Gluten Flour

October 7, 2010 - 4:14pm

golgi70

Inexperience with Hi Gluten Flour

Hello all

I've recently ventured into a new bakery doing some Old World/Artisan bread production. It's a wonderful new concept as I came from a wholesaling decade plus experienced European Artisan Bakery. This is much smaller and young. What is wonderful is we are grinding our wheat and rye berries ourself. My trouble is in the Hi Performance Giustos flour. It's the "bread flour" we use in conjunction with our fresh grain. I'm only experienced with Hi Protein flours in pizza and bagel making and not so much with bread. I was wondering if anybody has experience with using this product in breads and what changes would help. I'll share some of the problems and some ideas and see if anyone can help with my learning to control this product. I personally would love to be using a malted bread flour of sorts but I don't make the calls and do my best with what is given to me.

So for the problems I have. First off I'm not really sure if I want to develop the dough as I would with a lower protein flour to keep it from becoming so strong. And if so what type of test ie. window could i implement. (I've begun shortening my mixes that have a mixture of rye or wheat with the gluten and pull the dough just as a band window begins) Another is proofing because it never seems to stop bouncing back to the touch. I've adjusted a bit by "underproofing" and deep scoring. Regardless it tears more than I would like.

Hope thats not too much but any suggestions on dealing with this would be appreciated.

And on an odd side note does anyone know of the affects of soy sauce on bread dough? I understand its not like normal salt but does it react on dough like salt?

... My trouble is in the Hi Performance Giustos flour. It's the "bread flour" we use in conjunction with our fresh grain. ...

At the risk of making it obvious to all the other readers that I just "don't get" the context of the query, I have to ask:

- Why?

If the idea is to mix the boughten flour with flour you make from decidedly lo-gluten grains you grow and mill yourself, so the resulting combined flour has net a reasonable amount of gluten for making bread, that makes sense.

If the idea is to "compensate" for a large amount of whole-grain flours that have a markedly low gluten content, so the overall dough still has about the same gluten content you'd require for making white bread, that might make sense too (although I'm sure there are other ways to reach the same goal:-).

But if it's just because it says "bread flour" on the label, you've fallen victim to a "marketing term" -perhaps intended mainly for rank beginners- that doesn't make much sense in your context. It appears that Guisto's sells quite a few flours that are not hi-gluten.

(What net gluten value is your goal for your artisan flours: 10.5%? 11.5%? 12.5%? What net gluten value do you look for when making bagels or pizza: 11%? 12%? 13%? And what exactly are the gluten contents of the various Guisto's flours?)

Well I put "bread flour" in quotes because it is our standard white flour to use in most of our bread recipes. I know Giusto's has many flours and I've pushed to try them in place of the Hi Protein. I don't consider myself a "rank beginner" but the bakery I work for may have been led by such, previous to my arrival and the recipes were created using this medium. The specs put it at 13-13.5% protein. This is the exacttype of flour I have experience using for pizza/bagels in the past.

I had a few questions that I thought others might be able to help with and you could have just left this query unanswered instead of questioning my intelligence.

Mark Sinclair, whose username here is mcs, might be able to give you some pointers if you send him a message. He uses Wheat Montana brand flours which tend to run at about the same protein content as the flour you are using. Mark is able to turn out hearty rustic breads and delicate pastries made from the same flour, which sounds improbable. I'm not sure if it is a matter of tinkering with the hydration levels, or the mix times, or the use of bigas, or the stretch and folds, or the combination of all of those things. From personal experience, I can say that his products handle well in the dough stage and are a delight in the mouth, too.

Not sure what to tell you about using soy sauce. It seems to me that the topic came up before, so using the Search tool might turn something up.

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